Book Love. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live. - A. Trollope
I am a book lover. Crammed bookshelves spill over to stacks on the floor or on tabletops and baskets. (Is it obsessive?) Right now I am reading three different books at the same time. I like the way books feel, smell and the excitement of what the words will say to me. My idea of a delicious day is reading outside for hours. 
It is awesome to be able to read, to learn the letters of the alphabet have sounds, and that if you put the sounds together it makes a word! And words become sentences. And sentences become stories, and suddenly the magic happens. You can read! In How Reading Changed My Life, Anna Quindlen writes, "It is like rubbing two sticks together to make a fire, this act of reading, an improbably pedestrian task that leads to heat and light. Perhaps this only becomes clear when one watches a child do it." 
On Fridays I help out with the reading program in Markus' class. What fun I have! I watch the class room of seven-year-olds struggling at various levels to conquer the sounds of letters, putting letters together, forming words, and suddenly realizing they are reading. When I take them out in the hall, one on one, to practice reading aloud, I watch stubby fingers stabbing each word, earnest faces mouthing silent words before committing the words to the airwaves. It is serious work - this business of reading - slow and tedious. After all, most of them are just beginning. Except for tall Lehav who can hardly wait to read out loud. When it is his turn to read, something electric happens in the hall. Lehav seems to size up a sentence before beginning to read; none of this word-by-word stuff for him. He reads with drama, his voice rising and falling. When the dog ran, his voice warned of impending danger. When the character in the story says something as simple as, "Where did he go?" it becomes a melodrama, a moment of adventure for both of us. This is reading! I smile just thinking about the miracle I take part in every week. The wonder of reading; the magic of words. 
Reading and words obviously go together. Words rightly used have the potential of making us shiver with pleasure. All communication, the expression of ideas, the interface of human beings is dependent on words. I can change myself with words and attempt to let you into my personal world, telling you who I am-and you can do the same with me. All of which makes the world more habitable and less lonely.
We also speak and create a world-a world for someone else to live in. The harsh destroying words of my angry father; the comforting, nourishing words of a loving mother; the name calling bully in school; the affirming words of a teacher about work well done- these are only examples of how people use words to create a world for someone else to live in. Words have enormous potential for good or for bad. It is likely that more lives have been destroyed by words than by bullets. More grace and joy have been brought to lives by words than by expensive diamonds. Words not only create worlds, they give meaning to our lives.
I read because it is a good way to bump up against life. Reading may be an escape, but it is not escape from my own life and problems. It is escape from the narrow boundaries of being only me. Reading helps me find out who I am. I read to feel life. A story should make you feel something. The right thing said in the right way, ah, that's the delight of good books. I read for pleasure. Life is more than meat and potatoes. Learning to see, to laugh, and to enjoy others is reason enough to read. I read to learn. I learn and gain perspective, an involvement of myself so that it translates into my life. The critical moment in a story may not be when we read what is happening to a character, but when the character begins to see what is happening we enter into the characters life. It never hurts to sympathize with other people. To stand in their shoes.
There are many other reasons to read; as a way to work through problems in real life; as a way of celebrating life; for enjoyment; for entertainment and because you love beauty. Read to savor your life.
C.S. Lewis wrote that any book worth reading at ten years of age should be worth reading at fifty. I read Anne of Green Gables again and again before I was twelve. I cried through the story, and cheered up magically only at the happy ending. Nothing I can remember in my life before that had moved me to tears, and then to a sense of delight, as did the trials and triumph of the life of Anne. Maybe it's time to read Anne again to remember the joys of reading. Children's books are some of the best out there. I am reading Fablehaven aloud with Markus. It is captivating! You may find yourself shedding tears of happy memories, and finding fresh pleasure in the love of books. It's like honey for your heart.
